The Backlog Episode 12 (Day 79): Red Faction Guerrilla

With Friday’s arrival comes another back-log day for the 100 days of gaming. This time we would visit a game downloaded to the Xbox 360. Specifically Red Faction Guerrilla. This, like many games we have touched on here so far, is not a game I have a lot of history with. Rather it is yet another title I could keep from my days with an active XBL account. However this time, I did at least remember my brother playing the original Red Faction on his PC before he abandoned the platform for the 360 entirely (and in his case, it wasn’t a bad move at the time as the expense myth was still real AND he had no interest in the tech itself).

The game itself started off with a nice little opening cutscene to explain that, once again, Mars is in turmoil and a “Red Faction” resistance movement has arrisen among the miners who work the planet. And then you are off to your first destructions mission. It isn’t much, more then an introduction to the mechanic, but it does an amazing job leading up to why you join the resistance and setting up a revenge narrative for the main story.

I found the game to play very well with the exception of selecting weapons. While innovative, the fact that you can only have four and have to hit a bumper on the controller felt a little out of the way, but not too bad. Rather it was back at base when selecting your weapon load-out where things got weird as suddenly your button to back out of the menu was now a selection to put your gun in.

And if THIS is the best complaint I could find, you KNOW you are in for a good time! I’m going to enjoy this one when I get to it, though I’m likely not even going to have these issues, as I have this game now for PC (thanks to Wal-Mart clearance, I picked up all 4 games for $5 sometime last year), and the series just ramped up my interested when it comes along to play.